Report: Comcast’s public Xfinity WiFi program actually costs you money

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Last year, Comcast announced that it would begin rolling out a WiFi program that uses customer hardware to throw a wide public net. While it’s free to Comcast’s own Xfinity subscribers, everyone else is expected to pay for it. Needless to say, Comcast doesn’t offer any kind of compensation or credit to end-users who provide this service — even though providing public WiFi inevitably costs the end-user money.

How much money? An engineer at Speedify set out to test that question using a standard Xfinity Business Hotspot setup, consisting of a Cisco DPC3008 cable modem and a BelAir 20E WiFi router. According to Speedify’s testing, the router draws 0.14 amps when idle and 0.22 amps when loaded. By the company’s calculations, this comes out to roughly $23 per year at mid-Atlantic power rates. Comcast, meanwhile, has disputed the test fairness and wants Speedify to retest using different hardware. Speedify has promised to update the blog post when it hears back.

Objectively speaking, $23 isn’t much, even if you’re dirt poor, and the $23 figure assumes that the WiFi router is used 24/7. A more realistic assumption might be $10 to $12. Electrical costs, however, are only the beginning of why we have a problem with this kind of program. First, there’s no indication that Comcast explicitly assigns different IP addresses to temporary network guests versus standard users. This means that you could wind up on the hook for something a guest did while using your hotspot. It’s pitifully easy to spoof the SSIDs of these types of public hotspots — and while that speaks more to security precautions in Android and iOS than a problem with Comcast, the company is still opening users up to increased attacks by pushing ahead with its network plans.

Finally, there’s the fact that, once again, cable companies get to play by different rules than everybody else. It’s perfectly fine for them to charge you rental fees in perpetuity for your cable modem and to increase those fees at will, and to charge you for the privilege of running a WiFi hotspot on which they make money — and then to charge you for the electricity used to run their own for-profit WiFi network. It’s an issue of principle as much as anything, and while Comcast does provide the ability to turn the Xfinity setting off, they’re fully aware that the overwhelming majority of customers lack the expertise to find the setting or disable it themselves.

Speedify isn’t a neutral party in this — the company sells a software product that’s supposedly designed to help Comcast customers recover bandwidth through channel aggregation — but their data shows how telcos are shifting costs to their own customers to prop up profit margins. It may only be $8 to $10 a year, but take that amount times Comcast’s millions of subscribers, and it’s a healthy chunk of cost that the company doesn’t have to pay for.

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Just noticed my modem was live (Illinois). Had to go online to disable it. Will there be a class action lawsuit once someone figures out how to hack the modem and compromises a users home network?

Brian Kram

One can only hope.

SophiaHollandrom

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AnnaWHawkins

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BROneagli

You might have disabled it now, but if they push out a modem FW update, you bet your arse it’ll be right back on……

http://www.korioi.net/ Korios

If they do that they will class-action-sue their own asses.

Marrach

Unfortunately, YOU know what your Modem is doing. And you Care. BTW…You are actually LOOKING at your Modem, because you’ve placed the device like the valued piece of Network Hardware you know it to be.

Over 90% of the Cable Internet customers only know that when they see a Green Lite…They gots Internet. And Once they see they gots Internet, they shove the Modem thing back and behind something…usually the TV.

Roan Hayden

It gets worse. All your devices you used to logon to xfinitywifi, will now auto-connect without going through a logon proccess. So if you sell that ipad the new owner can get on xfinitywifi with a device that used your credentials to be authenticated. Guess who someones illegally activity will get tracked back to?

Exactly. Bad things happen when there is no (or at least severely limited) competition.

Jeff Vahrenkamp

Those numbers are also assuming that you never use your own router, which is not true either. I’m sure it comes out to less than $6 a year in electricity if you have a non-house member who would use it regularly. Dividing that by month, its 50 cents or less depending on how busy the sidewalk in front of your house is. That’s not a bad price to pay for expanding your router range significantly, since you will also benefit from it when your out in front of someone elses house. It’s an interesting idea.

On another note, most of the security concerns that are being brought up are true whether you have your own private network or the xfinity guest network, since I suspect both with have strong password protection and encryption, so if some one wants to do something bad and has the know how to hack one, they can hack the other.

massau

the 0.14 amps is that at 220V or 230V or 110V or just the 12V?

SumGuy954

Forget about the power. You would think putting your self out there like that would help you get a reduced bill considering there is money being made. At the very least offer the higher speed service upgrade at no addition charge to compensate for when the bandwidth gets weak.

When people connect to your service it will reduce your total available output. Most noticeable during 1080p steaming play back and when gaming.

I have the 30mb plan and I still have slow internet during parts of the day, and I am not in a program.

PhotoMaineAC

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If you allow Comcast to use your router as a public wifi hotspot, you in turn get to use the wireless routers of other Comcast users (those who don’t opt out). If you opt out, you save the energy costs, but that also means you don’t get to use those wifi hotspots yourself.

Is the cost worth the benefit? Only you can decide that.

ncgh

We’d like to see some more detailed information, but this is a mountain out of a molehill. Isolating the public from the private link is technically straightforward, if done correctly it’s just like there is simply another cable wifi link in your area. It’s not associated with you.
There is a significant advantage to comcast customers because they do get to use the public wifi when away from home.

jim moore

I’m “dirt poor” and think that Comcast should pay me to use their crappy internet.

Connor Sanders

I like it. As a user, I enjoy being able to access free WiFi from Comcast in a lot of places. As a Developer, I hate the idea that there is an open channel on my router. But with proper security in place, I support this idea.

Glen Barrett

It’s something similar to what AT&T has been doing with it’s home microcells. Instead of paying $500,000 to build a tower, they allow you to connect a device to your internet and power. So you need speedy internet first, and electrical power to reliably get AT&T service.

All this saves money because AT&T doesn’t need to spend $500,000 to build a tower in your neighborhood.

robin Grace

Oh quit whining Joel. A company can do exactly what it wants to. Go start your own, so I can tell you how to run yours. I can’t wait. Or better yet, move to a country, which is most of them, that don’t even allow you 24/7 to wifi/hotspot/internet there.

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